March Madness: Second Round Review

The Sweet Sixteen are set, and there are exactly zero real surprises and great stories. Sure, we get some interesting matchups (I’m looking forward to both of the South Regional matchups, and it will be interesting to see if USC can keep up their great effort against UNC), but where are the upsets? Is UNLV, or maybe Vandy, really the best underdog story we’re going to get at this point? Right now, I’m just hoping we don’t see all four one-seeds in the final four.

Looking at the brackets, my rank is now a very high number on both Facebook and ESPN. My best bracket is in the 40th percentile in the Tourney Challenge, since I didn’t even pick mostly chalk. Either the selection committee did an outstanding job this year (which is possible), or I should change my perception of what a “realistic” bracket actually is.

Anyway, I got 10 of the Sweet 16 correct, which I guess is decent (misses are in parentheses, see this for the original picks): Florida, (Butler), (Oregon), (UNLV), Kansas, (So. Illinois), (Pitt), UCLA, UNC, (USC), Vandy, Georgetown, Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Memphis. The lowest seed that I correctly picked into the Sweet 16 was Vandy (a six). I had Illinois (a 12) in there instead of SIU. Five of my Elite 8 are still in the tournament, including all of my Final Four.

My chances of getting all 16 correct were about 1 in 7000, while anyone who picked the actual results should have had only about a 1 in 500,000 chance. The all-chalk bracket, which got 11 of 16, had about a 1 in 5000 shot, but it wouldn’t be any fun to pick all the higher seeds.

Here are the chances for the remaining teams to reach the Elite Eight and beyond:

Rank

Seed

Team

Pyth%

Elite 8

Final 4

ChGame

Winner

1

1

Kansas

0.9869

0.8419

0.5879

0.3905

0.2266

2

1

North Carolina

0.9875

0.8429

0.5669

0.3709

0.2224

3

1

Florida

0.9830

0.7880

0.6251

0.3277

0.1694

4

1

Ohio State

0.9799

0.7792

0.4300

0.1971

0.0959

5

2

Georgetown

0.9795

0.7962

0.3486

0.1868

0.0900

6

3

Texas A&M

0.9787

0.5911

0.3238

0.1440

0.0680

7

2

UCLA

0.9750

0.6269

0.2528

0.1314

0.0555

8

2

Memphis

0.9695

0.4089

0.1887

0.0681

0.0264

9

3

Pittsburgh

0.9587

0.3731

0.1106

0.0447

0.0137

10

3

Oregon

0.9467

0.6140

0.1831

0.0488

0.0124

11

5

Butler

0.9396

0.2120

0.1084

0.0263

0.0061

12

4

Southern Illinois

0.9340

0.1581

0.0487

0.0147

0.0032

13

5

USC

0.9364

0.1571

0.0470

0.0126

0.0030

14

7

UNLV

0.9178

0.3860

0.0834

0.0158

0.0028

15

5

Tennessee

0.9325

0.2208

0.0575

0.0118

0.0027

16

6

Vanderbilt

0.9244

0.2038

0.0375

0.0088

0.0018

The one-seeds are still the favorites, although they have re-ordered themselves. UNC and Kansas move up to about 1-in-4 odds to win it all (from 1-in-5), while Florida’s chances improved to 1-in-6 with the thinning-out of their region. Ten teams have at least a one percent chance of winning the title, and they’re all 3-seeds or higher.

Pitt and Ohio State were hurt slightly by their performances (Pitt mostly for playing weak opponents), while USC and UNLV understandably made huge leaps.

It may be a problem there because I don’t think Facebook updates the Notes page when you update the original post. I made some errors in the initial calculation and had to make some changes to the post, so that’s probably what went wrong. The rankings on this page should be correct.

Now, if only I could get the formatting to work so that there’s an empty line after I put in a table…